The Opposite of Love
by GoddessofSnark
Summary: The opposite of love is not hate, it is apathy. She'd been in love once. But she'd never really cared enough to be passionate about it.


A/N don't own them, you know that by now. Enjoy.

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_The opposite of love is not hate, it is apathy. - Anonymous_

She'd been in love once. She'd been in that blissful serene state where nothing can possibly go wrong, no matter what. Where the world is daisies and butterflies and sunshine, and the rain stays away, except for the rainbows, and every night there are fireworks to rival any celebration. She'd lain on her bed of roses, cheeks ruddy with the glow of one in love, there's something blissful, an aura that radiates outward to others when you're in love, and that aura had been a part of her. Once.

Now if you searched her for any aura, you'd be hard-pressed to find one. Certainly not the one of someone deeply in love. Sure, she still woke up every morning next to the man she'd married nearly a decade previously. She still told him that she loved him every day when he went off to work. Everything in her life was much the same as when she had first fallen in love. There were no great rows, there was no abuse, no reason to make her fall out of love.

And perhaps, that was why she hated herself for it. He hadn't given her a reason to fall out of love. If he was some abusive git, then she'd have a reason to leave. If all they did was scream at each other, unable to bear one another's presence, she'd have a reason to leave. Instead, she was packing her bags, ready to duck out for no reason. At least, none that she could fathom. She'd simply fallen out of love. Now, everything was a habit to her. It was a habit to lean against him, it was a habit to brush that stray lock of ginger hair out of his eyes while he worked, so engaged in what he was thinking of that he didn't notice the hair obscuring his vision.

The passion had simply up and left. All she was left with was habit. And if she wanted a habit, she might as well have holed up in a convent. She had to thank Draco for this, she really did. Running into him and Pansy had been what prompted her to realize just how far out of love she had fallen. They were screaming at each other, right in pure daylight, out for anyone to see in the middle of Diagon Alley. But there was something about them, something about the way that they screamed at each other. They loved about each other deeply-they cared enough to hate each other.

Love and hate weren't on opposite sides of the spectrum. They were neighbours, friends, compatriots, lovers even, if you wish. Then went hand in hand with one another, so entwined that you could not have one without the other. You had to care deeply to love someone, and you had to care deeply about someone to hate them. You had to care enough to give yourself a reason to despise them. After all, hatred is an all-consuming thing, you have to care enough about a person to let them dominate your thoughts endlessly, whether or not your thoughts involve beds of roses or beds of nails, you still had to care.

And she didn't. She just couldn't find the energy to care about him any more. She didn't want to do this, but she couldn't stand the realization that her life had been reduced to this, nothing more than a series of the same events, day in and day out. When they were young, naïve still, they dreamt of wondrous adventures, of always being there for one another. When he proposed there on the battlefield, she'd thought herself the luckiest woman on earth to love and be loved by such a man. But she never really cared.

He was always there. He was always a constant in her life, from the day she set foot on the train, he was there. For the past twenty years, he'd been there. He was always just Ron, he was always the one that she could count on. She had fancied herself in love she supposed, but she never really was. She never cared about him enough to move him past that constant, to turn him into something she was passionate about. She was passionate about books, about collecting them, about learning. She was not passionate about her love.

And so she finished packing her belongings into two suitcases, leaving behind a carefully-thought out note,detailing her reasons why, heading out of the little place she'd called home for the better part of a decade, setting out into the world in search of knowledge, in search of truth, in search of adventure, but most of all, the one thing she was searching for above all other things, was passion. To find someone that she hated enough to love, to find someone she loved enough to hate, to find someone that she could be passionate about, to wake her from her apathetic, habitual dream of a life.


End file.
